


The Backup Plan, or The Difficulties of Creating Local Save Data When You're A Self-Sacrificial Asshole

by IntelligentAirhead



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AI Lance, Alternate Universe, Because he's an AI in this, But all puns aside an AI can definitely have ADHD trust me I have a permit, HC: ADHD Lance, HC: Autistic Keith, HC: Nonbinary Hunk, HC: Trans Woman Pidge, Lance is ADHD...coded, M/M, Mission Fic, neurodivergent characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-17 19:30:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15468438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IntelligentAirhead/pseuds/IntelligentAirhead
Summary: Keith is a rookie member of one of the various groups rebelling against the Galra Empire, but his first priority is the same as it's always been: finding and rescuing his brother.When the group's newest lead reveals a cache of sensitive data hidden in an abandoned Galran weapon testing facility, Keith is put in charge of infiltrating and extracting the data. Even with a time limit, the mission seems straightforward enough.Straightforward, that is, up until a rogue AI takes it upon himself to help out.Keith should know better by now: nothing is ever as simple as it seems.





	1. Sewers Are Supposed to Be Draining, But Not Like This

Keith’s life would be a lot easier if his brother hadn’t gotten himself abducted by aliens. Shiro probably didn’t mean to get kidnapped by a bunch of fluffy fascists, and it wasn’t like Keith blamed him, but it still sucked. The end results were the same: Keith, covered in dust, getting ready to infiltrate an abandoned Galran weapon testing facility full of sensitive data that might get nuked at any moment. No pressure or anything, though.

“What’s your visibility?” Pidge asked, short and staccato. All business. She understood better than anyone else. Even better than Allura. Family, mission, revolution. All synonyms. Everything else was background noise.

“It’s clearing up,” Keith said, increasing the magnification on his suit’s optics. “The eye should be directly overhead in a few minutes.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Pidge grumbled. “It’s your butt on the line if you get caught in the storm, anyway.” She always hated it when she couldn’t use her tech to count things down to the second. No surprise that she’d been complaining since this mission made it to the drafting table.

Keith couldn’t bring himself to be too upset. Gut feelings had always been more his speed.

“Remember, as soon as you’re in the facility, you’re offline.” Pidge continued, as if Keith had somehow forgotten. They’d been over this at least thirty times. “No biosignatures, no data transmission, nothing. There’s not a single external signal getting through there.”

“Got it.”

“Be prepared to go analog. We don’t know if it has EMP capabilities, or—”

“I got it, Pidge.”

Pidge made a short, irritated noise. “Just making sure,” she said.

Great. Now Keith felt like a dick. He grimaced, then checked the visibility again. Probably five more minutes until he had to go. Five minutes with an angry, silent Pidge.

“Walk me through the suit again?” Keith prompted.

“I thought you ‘got it,’” Pidge sniffed. Then, after a moment, she took the bait. “The suit’s going to store all the data you find, so be careful what you plug it into. If you infect it with some kind of virus, I’m going to coat your entire bunk in slime.” Her voice went from snippy to reverent in the space of five seconds. _“One-hundred-and-eighty petabytes_ in _one_ human-sized suit! Yes, I am a genius, thank you!” Keith had clue what that meant. It was probably impressive. “Well, me and Hunk,” she qualified. “Genius dream team. Anyway, it’s modified to be immune to most kinds of EMP or derivatives, which is great, considering the emergency protocols.” She didn’t repeat the emergency protocols. Once was enough for that, apparently.

All of the suits Hunk and Pidge built monitored the teams’ vitals. This one, though, was special. Pidge had phrased it as nicely as she could have: the suit would wipe all of its stored data if Keith was ‘separated’ from his armor.

It was a pretty way of saying that if Keith died, they didn’t want the Galra getting info off his corpse. Keith wished the team would just come out and say it, but whatever. They all needed something to help them sleep.

“My main concern is this ‘nuisance’ the Galra keep talking about,” Pidge said. “I’ve been scanning the chatter for weeks, and they still won’t give me anything useful.”

“Whatever it is, it’s keeping them out of the building,” Keith said. “And unless you get your answer in the next forty-five seconds…”

“You know Allura’s going to hate this, right?” Pidge asked. “She explicitly said not to go in until we know what we’re dealing with.”

“Well, we’re out of time,” Keith said. Literally. They had twenty seconds until go-time. “The storm’s our only window to get in there undetected.”  If they waited for another opening, the Galra might burn the facility once and for all. Or, worse, they’d finally muscle their way back in and start producing more weapons. “Besides, Allura can’t yell at me once I’m in there.”

“She can still yell at me, jackass.”

Keith laughed. “Over and out, Pidge.”

“Roger. Over and out.”

As soon as the transmission ended, Keith was off like a shot. He had eight potential access routes to investigate, and a limited amount of time to secure a workable one.

The front door was a bust, but worth a try. It looked as if the material had been melted into its frame, which, shit. Whatever the ‘nuisance’ was, it was packing heat.

Keith let himself feel a thrill of alarm when his plasma saber didn’t even make a dent in the door. If molten plasma couldn’t bust through it, what would it take to seal it into place?

Keith let himself slash at the door two or three more times before moving on. He couldn’t afford to try the same thing over and over until it worked, even if he _really_ wanted to.

Three of the service doors were similarly sealed off. Keith forced himself not to yell in frustration.

Supply docks were a no-go for the same reasons.

Trying to climb up to the roof was going better than anticipated, up until the fire escape collapsed. Then, as if to mock Keith, it reassembled itself. Fucking Galra tech.

Keith hated this building and everything it stood for, but he was getting in if it was the last thing he did.

He had two more potential access points to try, and so help him, if he had to crawl through the building’s sewer access, he would.

 

* * *

 

Keith had to crawl through the sewer access. On the blueprints, it was labeled as The Waste Disposal Network in cheery font, but a sewer was a sewer was a sewer, which meant it was a tunnel full of sewage, and no cutesy-professional name would disguise the way it smelled like shit. Probably because it was full of shit.

But as much as Keith hated the saying that beggars couldn’t be choosers— whoever made up that saying obviously never had to beg for anything— he was running low on options. So. Shit tunnel.

Whatever. It’d be fine as long as he didn’t slip.

Unless, of course, the sewer wanted to prove him wrong by gaining sentience and talking to him.

“Okay, dude, I kinda figured you’d be a tough cookie by the third attempt, but this is just _gross._ Who does this?”

Keith jumped, nearly sliding back before catching himself on the guardrail of the service walkway. What the _fuck._

“Oh my god, you almost fell straight in.” A snicker resounded through the tunnel. “God. I am _so_ glad I’m recording this.”

What the fuck was happening? Where was the voice coming from?

“Seriously, though, I’m not really getting your motives here.” The voice just kept going, undeterred by Keith’s silence. “Like, oh, let me get all slimed up so I can match the decor when I finally get inside my local Big Ugly Concrete Hellzone. Great idea. You’d fit right in. If, y’know, any of the sleazeballs working here were still working here.” The voice took on a sharper tone. “Which! They aren’t. Nothing works here, actually. Nothing here for you. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Keith grit his teeth and started charging forward at a renewed pace. Obviously this person didn’t want him grabbing any of the info in the facility, which meant that it was all the more valuable. Besides, the more progress Keith made, the closer he was to shutting whoever it was up. They were probably holed up in the control center somewhere.

“Are you ignoring me?” The voice sounded scandalized. “I can play that game too, y’know!” There was a beat of blessed silence.

“I didn’t _have_ to be nice about this,” the voice continued. “I can get you out of here in like three seconds flat! It’d barely take effort. I wouldn’t even have to pause my game of solitaire.”

“Why don’t you just do it, then?” Keith snapped. “You’ve been all bark, no bite, so far.”

The voice squawked, and it didn’t take much imagination to picture the incompetent Galran middle-manager behind it. “I am _plenty_ threatening!” The voice insisted.

Keith snorted. “Sure. Until you come out here and put your fists where your mouth is, I’m gonna keep walking.”

The voice squawked again, and then all was silent. For thirteen perfect seconds.

“Wait,” The voice started, and Keith was about to flip his fucking lid because he thought that finally, finally the person had decided to shut the hell up. “Wait a minute. You know who I am, right?”

“Some dude they left behind to guard the facility while they evacuated?” Keith bit out. “I don’t really care.”  
  
The offended noise the voice made was so high pitched and scandalized that, for a second, Keith was half-sure his grandmother had risen from the dead to witness his sewer shame.

 _“Excuse you,”_ the voice started, and wow, they were really channelling halmoni for all they were worth. “I _just_ called the people working here sleazeballs!”

“I was ignoring you,” Keith said. “Because I thought you worked here.”  
  
“Okay,” The voice started, then stopped. “Okay, so…” The voice made an exasperated noise. “Whatever, I don’t appreciate the comparison, but I get why you’d think that I was one of them. And I kinda thought you were one of them too— until _this convo,_ that is,” they qualified, stressing the words, “because I, for one, have the ability to draw conclusions from the things people say to me.”

“Congrats,” Keith said, voice flat.

 _“Thank_ you,” the voice accepted, either not hearing or ignoring the sarcasm. “So, I can figure out you’re probably not the biggest fan of the Galra. But that doesn’t mean I know why you’re here, so, like, I’m still not letting you in.”  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” Keith said. “I’ll find my own way in.”

“Uh?” The voice chuckled, and it echoed and bounced around the tunnel, setting Keith’s teeth on edge. “No you won’t. Or did you not figure that out from your first six tries?”

Keith didn’t dignify that with an answer.

“So,” the voice started, pitching up like the person behind it was about to start up a round of truth or dare, rather than setting obstacles in Keith’s path, “why d’ya want in?”

“Why would I tell you that?”

“Uh, duh?” The voice sounded genuinely confused. “So I can decide whether I want to unlock the door or taze the sewage you’re walking through.”

Keith spared a moment’s glance at the sewage around his ankles before the words registered, then threw himself at the narrow ledge of the service walkway.

“Oh my god! You _do_ have expressions other than bored and pissed! Holy crow!”

Keith ground his teeth together. “You’re not making a great case for why I should tell you my mission. Obviously I can’t trust you as far as I can throw you.”

“I mean, if you can figure out how to throw me, that’d be impressive.” There was a pause. “But fine. You have a point. Not like I have a problem talking about myself.” Keith could believe that. Even so, there was a solid thirty seconds of silence before the voice spoke up again. “Try not to bow down in awe too much— that’d be really freaking gross, considering the stuff swilling around down there— but you’re looking at the guy who cleared this place out. Or, listening to the guy, I guess.” The voice picked up confidence as it went, bordering on arrogance by the end. “The name’s Lance, but you might know me as L4-NC Unit 3. I’m kind of a big deal.”

“Uh huh.” Keith has never heard of this dude in his life.

 _“‘Uh huh?’”_ Apparently that didn’t fly with Lance. “All you have to say is _‘uh huh’?_ I took out this entire facility! All by myself!”

Oh. Oh wait.

“So _you’re_ the nuisance.”

 _“I’m the_ **_what?!”_ ** Lance must have audio-capped, considering his voice feed rose in volume so sharply that it crossed into distortion. It was barely recognizable as speech.

“We’ve been picking up on Galra chatter,” Keith said, careful not to reveal too much. “They kept talking about this ‘nuisance’ that didn’t let anyone into the building. That’s all we knew.” He shrugged. “That, and how much they wanted all the info still stuck in here.” Also, they were going to destroy the place if they couldn’t get in. Probably best not to share that tidbit just yet.

“Oh,” Lance said, subdued for once. “So… Huh.” He went quiet for a long moment. “No one else knows that I did… anything, huh.”

How was Keith supposed to respond to that? Was he supposed to… No. He drew the line at comforting weird, absent strangers that may or may have not done the things they claimed to have done.

“They could have at least given me a cooler codename,” Lance said, after a while, and yeah, no, Keith was justified in his silence. Clearly, Lance was fine. “Jeez. I should be, like, The Destroyer. The Terminator! Hal.”

Keith stopped walking. “Why _Hal?”_

“Dude— or, sorry, I shouldn’t assume—”

“Dude,” Keith confirmed.

“Okay, cool,” Lance said. _“Dude,_ you _cannot_ tell me that you’ve never seen Space Odyssey. You’re not the one who’s stuck here! You have no excuse!”

Keith rolled his eyes and started walking again. “Some people have better things to do than sit around watching movies.”

Lance made another offended noise. Maybe one day he’d run out of them.

“How did you even empty this place out, anyway? We’ve been trying to take down facilities head on for years.” Keith had a hard time imagining Lance taking down a paper bag, from the sound of him.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Lance said, sounding distracted. “I run it.”

“What, from, like, a control room?” Keith had thought as much when Lance had first started talking, but it jarred with how adamant Lance was about not being affiliated with the Galra. Also… “Wouldn’t you have run out of food by now?”

A few seconds later, Keith was distracted by the sight of— finally— a door. It looked like it had a camera attached to the frame, but whatever. Seemed like the only person who could see him was Lance, anyway.

Then, as Keith approached, a light flickered out from the camera, and— oh. That wasn’t a camera.

“Oh no,” Lance said. “I literally run it.”

Then the light shakily took form, a projection of a person with dark hair and an oversized, baggy jacket, glowing blue. The projection grinned at him, then leaned back against the doorframe, arms crossed behind his head.

Then, completely in sync with the words broadcasted through the tunnel, the projection’s mouth moved. “I’m the system’s AI.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I'm back on my bullshit! Hope you enjoy my shiny, new, completely self-indulgent project!
> 
> Also, happy birthday, Lance!


	2. Some Disassembly Required

Keith’s hand twitched— only for a moment— towards his plasma saber. Then he clenched his fist. A primary system’s data wouldn’t be stored down in the sewers, and Keith couldn’t take him out manually without direct access. If the AI was telling the truth.

“Look,” the AI started, and Keith had to work not to slide into a fighting stance. “You don’t seem like a bad guy, but, like, I have no clue what you’re up to. And I can’t help you unless I know what’s up.”

“Help me?” Keith snorted. “You just said you run the place.”

“Uh, _yeah,”_ Lance drawled. “Thanks for the recap. Do you also remember when I said that—  hello, hi, yeah— _I_ cleared it out? And that I hated everyone who worked here?”

“I remember you _saying_ that,” Keith said. “Haven’t seen any proof.”

“Wow, imagine that,” Lance said. “It’s almost like we’re hanging out in the sewer. Because someone won’t let his friendly neighborhood AI in on why he’s poking around an abandoned weapons facility. Suspiciously.”

“You have a projector,” Keith said, ignoring the second half of Lance’s rambling. “But you haven’t proven that you’ve done anything you said you did.”

Lance crossed his arms, sinking back against the doorframe. Then he sunk too far, and squawked. “I swear, that wall is like an inch closer in the building schematics,” he said, pulling himself upright. He shot a dirty look at the door behind him, then turned back to Keith.

“Anyway, yeah, congrats, Detective McBroody, I do have a projector. What about it?”

“If you really took down this facility, you should have security tapes. Show them to me, and I’ll believe you.”

“Great idea,” Lance said. “Or it would be, if it wasn’t literally impossible to softhack the input on this projector.”

Keith squinted at him. A long moment passed.

“Oh my god.” Lance closed his eyes. “Okay! How much about technology do you know?”

“A bit,” Keith lied. He could recognize when his computer had a new virus, and he was getting better at handing it off to Pidge before it was unsalvageable.

 _“Why would anyone send someone who—_ Okay. Okay.” Watching an AI take steadying breaths was a strange experience. They didn’t have lungs. Did they? They shouldn’t.

“Have you ever tried to hook up your computer to an external monitor?” Lance asked. “Like, maybe it’s movie night, and you want to watch _Here We Stand_ on the big screen—”

“That’s not a movie.” If it were a movie, Keith wouldn’t have had to hear the theme song three times an hour every time Shiro and his boyfriend stayed in for a date night. As it was, Keith had approximate knowledge of thirteen different story arcs, half-absorbed while grabbing snacks from the kitchen, and a vague understanding of ninja politics.

“Will you _please_ let me finish my educational metaphor?” Lance pointed at Keith with his hands, palms flat. “Anyway! You need a way to connect the computer and the monitor, like a cable, or a transmitter, or something, and you need to set the input channel. There’s a hardware component— the cable— and the software component. I only have access to software. I could rig this projector so it could accept input from the video archives, but the hardware that would connect them is missing because everyone with hands is long gone.”

That… kind of made sense. It was pretty elaborate for a lie, in any case. But still.

“Why aren’t they connected in the first place?”

Lance brought a hand to his face, then made a sweeping gesture. “Gee! I don’t know! Maybe because all internal footage is supposed to be _internal_ and not floating around in the sewers? Which, y’know, you could get out of at any time if you just told me what your deal is. Just a thought I had.”

“Why is there a projector out here at all, then?”

“So I could communicate with—” Lance made a frustrated noise. “You know what? This is ridiculous! You haven’t given me anything to work with, and I’m stuck here convincing you that technology works the way it’s supposed to! I promise, if I had the capability to throw myself a dive-in movie party in the sewer, I wo—” He cut himself off, making a face.

“Actually, no, I wouldn’t. That is about eight new layers of sad, coated in an extra little film of gross.” Lance paused, then snorted. _“Film._ I’m hilarious.”

The more time Keith spent with Lance, the more obvious it was that only about twenty percent of the things he said contained useful information.

“So any proof—”

“Is beyond this door, yeah.”

Keith grimaced. He had few options, and none of them were appealing. He didn’t know anything about this AI or the way this facility worked. For all he knew, the door in front of him led straight into a trap.

Set precedent made that the most likely scenario.

Keith had only heard bits and pieces from Pidge, Hunk, and Coran, but it was enough for him to be sure of three things. One: Allura’s ship used to have an AI. Two: Aforementioned AI had unrestricted access to life support. Three: That hadn’t ended well.

The rest of the details were vaguer, cobbled together from offhand comments. The Galra had corrupted the ship’s processes somehow, reprogramming the AI in the process, and the team had nearly died as a result. From Hunk’s comments, they’d nearly been launched into a supernova.

Yeah, Keith didn’t want to die in a sewer.

Though… that had been a later step. The sun thing had been an escalation; the Galra probably wanted the ship for themselves, so the self-destruction via dying star had been a last resort. Keith would be better off worrying about the building’s AI ejecting him the same way he claimed to have thrown out the… wait a second.

 _Why_ had the AI thrown out the Galra?

The ship’s AI had only tried to eject the team once it had been corrupted. Before then, it had followed its usual procedure, as far as Keith knew. It had been designed to make sure the ship ran smoothly, and to keep the team safe.

Shouldn’t the weapon facility’s AI have the same priorities? Why would a _Galran_ AI hate the Galra? Especially one programmed to run a weapons testing facility?

Unless the Galran AI had been hacked, too.

Keith narrowed his eyes at the projection. It was almost funny, in a warped kind of way, that the Galra might have had their own tricks twisted back on them. Or maybe they’d stolen a trick from the rebels’ books. This facility _had_ been defunct for a while. Maybe the Galra’s AI had been rewired first, and they used that trick, in turn, on Allura’s group.

“Hello? Earth to mystery dude? Or, well, K27Tf8A to mystery dude.” The AI laughed, but it was a bit too high pitched and short. “Jeez. I should really give this place an actual name. Provisional designations don’t exactly roll off the tongue.”

It was to Keith’s advantage if the AI _had_ been rewired by another rebel group, but there was no guarantee of that. Anyone good at their job would have taken the data the minute the AI gave them the opening. Besides, if he had been reprogrammed, there was no telling whether the dominant programming would reassert itself, or when.

This was why Keith didn’t handle the tech shit. It was all a bunch of speculation. What-ifs and if-thens, when all Keith wanted was something with concrete results. Some wires he could coax into sparking? Fine. Straightforward recipe for explosive devices? Great. A circuit that just needed completion? Simple enough. Lines of code that may or may not result in catastrophe depending on a typo? He’d rather take a dip in cowshit.

Screw it. Keith wasn’t going to waffle over hypotheticals for an eternity and a half. Shiro might have drilled his bit about patience yielding focus into Keith’s head, but there were different kinds of patience, and Keith’s wasn’t built for standing in front of doors and yelling at AIs. Watching and waiting for signs of the AI taking a turn for the evil, however, he could do. At least that way he’d be getting something done, and if worse came to worst, he’d be inside the facility. All the easier to take the AI out.

“—can’t just keep calling you Mystery Dude. You need, like, a code name. Like Snake, or Killer, or—”

“Red,” Keith said, cutting Lance off. He’d give the bare basics, and nothing more. Especially not his name. “Call me Red.”

“Aw, I liked Killer. You look like a Killer,” Lance said.

“You literally can’t see my face.” Killer _did_ sound cool. Still, he wasn’t letting a potentially hostile AI choose his codename.

“I’m with a group that fights against the Galra empire,” Keith continued. “The Galra want the information in this facility, so we’re trying to get to it before they do.”

The AI stalled, frozen for a bit, and Keith shifted so he was further from the sewage. He wasn’t risking getting tazed into a river of shit.

“I see,” Lance said, after a long pause. It was quiet. “Let me guess: if they don’t get the info, they’re gonna destroy the facility, right?”

Keith startled, and Lance rolled his eyes. “Told you I can draw conclusions.” He smiled like a crack in a windshield. “Would be a lie to say I wasn’t expecting this.”

Lance stared off into the tunnel, arms wrapped around his torso, foot tapping on the ground, and it was weird. It was weird that someone without a physical form used his whole body to emote. Whole projection? Whatever.

Keith wished he had more than stories about his team’s former AI. It was impossible to tell what typical AI behavior was, much less a potentially reprogrammed one. His instincts didn’t have a point of reference, so he was stuck feeling like a twitchy cat in a new house.

Silence stretched for too long, and Keith was about ready to take his plasma saber to the door when the AI finally nodded to himself. “Okay, I’m gonna float this out there: I’ll help you get your info, and you promise to actually talk instead of ignoring me the whole time. Tit for tat.”

“What’s your tat, then?” Keith asked, tensing.

“Uh, hello? I literally just told you.” Lance raised his arms in the air. “Just don’t ignore me. It’s boring to work alone, and it’s worse when someone’s there, but they’re all silent and broody.”

That didn’t make any sense. “But what do you _want_ out of it?” Keith’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re hoping that I’ll slip up, it’s not going to work. I’m not going to just hand over sensitive information.”

“Will you _chill out?”_ Lance asked. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, just to be dramatic. AIs couldn’t get tension headaches. They didn’t have heads. “We’ve been over this: Me and the Galra? Not exactly pals! So, what I ‘want’ out of this is for you to get your info and get out safely. That’s it! I just don’t want you to be a jerk the whole time! It’s gonna take me a while to disable some of the security measures I’ve built up, and neither of us are going to enjoy it if we’re both constantly pissed off, okay?”

Keith hesitated. “I won’t talk about anything confidential.”

“Are you—” Lance let out an explosive sigh, loud enough to be distorted by the speakers. “I live and breathe confidential info! Or, well.” His face furrowed. “You get what I mean! You’re literally going to download the huge stash of confidential information that _I’m_ sitting on.”  

Keith crossed his arms. “This is the deal.”

“Fine! Okay! Whatever!” Lance exclaimed. In the same breath, the door made an ominous clunk, then swung open. “Be a rude, unfair jerk if you want. Who am I to stop you?”

Keith didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he brought his hand to the hilt of his plasma saber and approached the open door.

The first thing Keith noticed about the new area was that it still smelled like shit. The second was that it was a locker room.

“Behold: the scenic allure of the maintenance access,” Lance said, as if Keith didn’t have a copy of the building’s schematics glowing in the corner of his helmet’s UI. “To your right, you’ll see a bunch of lockers, and to your left you’ll see _my mortal enemy.”_

Alarmed, Keith whirled to face— some sewage encrusted coveralls crumpled on the floor.  

“Don’t stop on my account!” Lance’s cheery announcement trailed into something more plaintive. “ _Please_ destroy them. It’s for the good of humanity. For digital entities. For a digital entity. Me. Please.”

Keith looked between the coveralls and Lance, who still stood in the doorway. “What.”

“Okay, look. Can I clear a bunch of Galra out of here? Sure, no sweat. Literally. Barely need to cool my processors. But _those.”_ Lance jabbed a translucent blue finger towards the clothes like a gun at a hostage. “They torment me. I can’t throw them out. They’re here forever.”

“So… What?” Keith shook his head like he would to get water out of his ear. “You want me to take out your laundry?”

“Can you set them on fire?” The excitement in Lance’s voice bordered on bloodlust.

“Yeah, no,” Keith drawled. “I’m throwing them in the sewer.” He wasn’t going to stink up a room with burnt sewage if he could help it.

“Spoilsport,” Lance muttered. The effect didn’t really land when his voice was coming from five different speakers.

By the time Keith had made it back to the locker room, the door on the other side was swinging open. He stared at it for a long moment, then looked back out at the sewer.

He’d just walked out and handed Lance the chance to slam the door on him. Lance _hadn’t_ , but still. What the fuck. What was he _thinking?_

Keith was supposed to be vigilant— what good was staying on his toes if he did a goddamned pirouette off a cliff?

“Door’s open!” Lance piped up, like Keith couldn’t see that for himself. What he couldn’t see, however, was Lance. He must have turned his projection off. “The hallways should be mostly clear, but I’m gonna run diagnostics just in case I’m forgetting something. Don’t touch any door knobs until I give the okay.”

“Roger,” Keith said, automatically following into the rhythm, and no. _No._ This was the problem. The rhythm of teamwork was too comfortable— someone else handling the tech and walking Keith through the legwork. It left Keith disarmed. Vulnerable.  

He grit his teeth. This AI wasn’t part of his team, wasn’t Pidge or Hunk, and Keith couldn’t afford to get comfortable just because things felt a little familiar.

Keith would have to concentrate on the differences. No one on his team would have made Keith pause in the middle of an important mission to handle some laundry. No one on his team was this chatty— not in the way Lance was. Hunk’s rambling was different; less expectant.

“You still with me?” Lance asked, and that was exactly it. Lance spoke like he expected Keith to have an answer. Keith couldn’t just let the words wash over him like waves— he had to fight against the surf.

“Yeah,” Keith said. “What’s happening?”

“So, good news and bad news,” Lance started. “Bad news: most of the rooms with data off the grid— like, hard copy files and stuff— have semi-autonomous defense mechanisms, since I thought that’d be easier. Which! It is! To defend. Not to break in. Sorry about that.”

The sudden blare of children booing made Keith flinch backwards, until he realized it was a sound clip. He could feel a headache coming on.

“But, good news!” This time, the sound clip was of children cheering. If Keith hadn’t thrown his plasma saber through a speaker by the end of this, he’d deserve a medal. “While I work on those, you’re basically free to loot around in your pick of the lower priority rooms.”

Keith made a face. “What’s stored in the lower priority rooms?” They sounded… low priority.

“Weapon prototypes, for one,” Lance said, and Keith’s head snapped up. “Yep. Thought you’d be interested in that, Killer.”

“It’s Red,” Keith corrected, halfhearted. Killer really did sound cool.

“Roger, Red Death.” What the fuck. That was so much cooler than Red. Keith was never going to be able to forgive himself _or_ Lance for this.

Lance’s projection flickered into view a few feet down the hall. “I’ve tried to bust the ones I can reach, but, again, no hands.” He waved his through the nearest wall in demonstration. “So it’s mostly been me knocking things off tables like a cat. If a cat had to, like, maneuver stuff by spinning centrifuges really fast.”

“How do you know anything about cats? You’re an AI,” Keith said.

“Uh, yeah,” Lance drawled. “Sure am, dude. Got direct access to the internet and everything. Y’know. The place flooded with videos of cute, fluffy animals.”

Keith had walked right into that one, even if he was justified. No one could predict that the AI running a _weapon testing facility_ would like cat videos.

“So, you got any pets?” Lance asked. “Or do they frown on that in your super secret rebel club?”

Keith frowned, then opened his mouth to respond. Unfortunately, Lance was faster.

“And don’t say that’s confidential because there is no freaking way that’s true.” He paused for half a millisecond. “If it helps, I can go first, even. I don’t have any. Although, there are some geckos living in the vents. But they’re more, like, guests, since I can’t exactly feed them.”

“Uh,” Keith started, more to stop the neverending flow of words than anything else. “I have a dog?”

Lance’s dramatic inhale would have been excessive for someone with lungs. “Do you have pictures?”

“Why would I have pictures?” Conversations with Lance felt like waking up from a nap on a bus that had passed Keith's stop forty minutes back. “I’m on an extraction mission!”

 _“Right,”_ Lance said, like he’d somehow forgotten. “What’s your team like?”

Keith stalled. They were dipping into dangerous territory— Allura’s _existence_ was confidential information.

“No pressure, if like, that breaks our agreement,” Lance said, and now Keith felt weird about his end of the promise. He’d promised to talk back, sure. But what was he supposed to say?

“Oh, first door coming up on your right should be unlocked,” Lance said.

“Should be?”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “People evacuated pretty fast, and that one’s not automatic. I don’t think locking up was their first priority.” The projection flickered out.

“Okay,” Lance said, and Keith worked not to flinch when the projection reappeared on his six. “Just checked, and you’re good to go.”

“They’re weird,” Keith blurted out, and immediately wanted to drive his plasma saber through his mouth.

“Huh?” Lance blinked at him. Literally. The projection flickered in and out.

“My team,” Keith grit out. “They’re weird.” He turned and shoved his way through the door, drawing his saber as he went.

The room was empty— huge, but empty. It was built like a shooting range, with different kinds of plasma rifles scattered about with no regard to weapon safety. Which would make sense if civilians were suddenly forced to evacuate. It made less sense with trained weapons specialists.

Lance flickered into view, sitting on one of the work benches shoved off to the side, legs dangling off the side.

“What did you _do?”_ Keith asked.

“What do you mean?” Lance asked. He flickered around the room, disappearing and reappearing with his hands on his hips, like he was surveying the area, then went back to the table. “Yeah, I got nothing. Didn’t really figure out how to work with this one, so I really, genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How did you scare them this badly?” Keith asked, gesturing at the discarded weapons.

“Oh,” Lance said. “Uh. So, there’s this compound they use here that’s, like, extremely combustible. Like, a little bit of static? Would blow everything to kingdom come. _That_ combustible.”

Keith gaped at him. _“And you flooded the facility with it?”_ He tensed to run, then remembered the plasma saber. It was still drawn. He wasn’t dead yet.

“No!” Lance yelped, crossing his arms in front of him. “Like, don’t get me wrong, everyone working here was a piece of work— think evil kindergartner’s macaroni art eaten and thrown up by a rabid raccoon here— but I’m not a fan of dying. That would’ve taken me out too.” He shook his head. “So, nah, I didn’t spread that stuff around. I just made it _smell_ like I did.” He grinned. “And then I told everyone they had fifteen dobashes before the place blew.”

Keith stared at him for a long moment, Lance’s words ricocheting in his head like shrapnel. ‘Not a fan of dying.’

It made sense for a reprogrammed AI to focus on saving whatever it could for the other side, but… The phrasing rubbed Keith wrong. Not a fan of dying.

That sounded like a personal stance, something said on the fly. It didn’t sound like a mandate. It didn’t sound like something that came from someone else.

“I also tried to break what I could," Lance continued. "Since it’d be pretty bad if the Galra ever did make their way back in here and could pick up what they dropped, but, _again_..." He flashed jazz hands in Keith’s direction. “So, this mess is up to you. You said they were on their way, right? Well, that, or about to destroy the place.”

 _“You_ said that,” Keith said. “Because you said you could draw conclusions.”

Lance nodded. “Lucky thing for you, too, because it means I can hand off fun jobs like this without waiting up on your explanations. Let’s be real: if I relied on those, we’d both die of old age. Or Galra explosives. Either or.”

Keith crossed his arms, but didn’t dispute that. “So, what? You want me to just slash through these things?”

 _“No!”_ Lance yelped. “Remember when I said _highly combustible_ compound, earlier? Still a thing!”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Keith clenched his fists.

“You’ll have to disassemble them. Then you can destroy the parts, if you want.”

“And how am I supposed to disassemble them?”

“So, basically what you want to do is— oh, wait. One second.” Lance disappeared again, replaced by weapon schematics that hovered in the air.

“Okay,” Lance’s voice continued. “So, this bit superheats the plasma.” Part of the schematic glowed red. “You want to avoid messing with it until you’ve disconnected the power supply, located here.” Another, smaller part glowed green. “You want to pinch both sides, like this.” Two arrows appeared on either side of the highlighted part, drawing closer to it. “Then, slide it out at a ninety degree angle until you hear a click.”

“Wait.” Keith picked up a rifle, then held up a hand. “Can you go over that again?”

“Sure thing,” Lance obliged, and this time, Keith followed along. It was easier to follow and remember when he had his hands on the rifle, seeing how it connected and feeling the way it came apart. After the first rifle was disassembled, Keith took the parts that were safe to destroy and hacked them into scrap. It was satisfying to see that at least some things in this facility weren’t immune to his saber.

Lance whistled. “Nice work, Killer.”

“What happened to Red Death?” Keith asked, voice bleached of inflection. He wasn’t going to give anything away.

“Seemed a bit mean to give you what you wanted, but worse,” Lance said. “Besides, after the way you went after that gun? Killer fits. Might as well commit to the gag.”

This was the worst.

Keith didn’t sulk as he disassembled the next weapon. He didn’t have the mental space, considering it was a completely different construction than the last model. Bit by bit, though, he grew familiar with the weapons in his hands, and fell into the rhythm of disassembling them.

“So,” Lance said, swinging translucent legs off the edge of the table again, once they’d covered each unique schematic enough that Keith was pretty confident he wouldn’t blow his hands up by mistake. “Your team’s weird?”

Keith’s hands slipped on the rifle, catching it at the last second. So much for confidence. “What.”

“What you said earlier,” Lance prompted. “You said your team was weird.”

Keith hesitated. He didn’t trust Lance. Then again, he didn’t trust anyone, so it wasn’t like that was new. And the more he talked with him, the less it seemed like Lance was working with someone else’s agenda.

Which was even scarier.

Lance had been programmed to run a Galra facility. There wouldn’t be any kind of incentive for him to do the right thing. Not without outside interference, anyway.

So what was his game?

Keith bit the inside of his cheek. It’d be fine. He’d already decided that he’d take Lance out if he turned out to be evil, so it wasn’t as if he was risking much.

‘Not a fan of dying,’ the shrapnel of Lance’s bombshell insisted. Tough shit, Keith countered. No one was. All Lance had to do was prove he wasn’t evil.

Shouldn’t be too big of an ask.  

“My team’s…” Keith grunted. He sucked at getting words out. “P— Green’s probably the one I know best. Yellow’s…” Kind. Anxious. A good judge of character. Capable of holding a grudge for years. Forcing Keith to communicate his boundaries on pain of long, awkward conversations. “Cool, but we don’t talk much. Don’t know what to say.” Keith didn’t, anyway. Hunk never had trouble finding something to talk about.

“Okay, one,” Lance started, which didn’t bode well. “Creative codenames there, _Red._ This is why you should have taken me up on my prestigious naming services. I also do christenings.”

“Don’t name a baby Snake.”

Lance made an offended noise and clasped his hand to his chest. “I would _never!”_ He shook his head. “Anyway. Secondly, that doesn’t sound ‘weird’. That sounds like you’re describing kids you met on your first day of school.”

Keith paid more attention to the next step of the disassembly than necessary. “That’s what’s weird,” he muttered. “They all…” He sighed. “They’re constantly hanging out with each other. They…” Keith worked his mouth, looking for words. They wanted to know him. They made the effort to look for him. They were _weird._ “They care about each other.”

“Uh, yeah? That’s how teams work,” Lance said. “How friends work, honestly.”

Keith had to pinch and slide the component. Then came the lift.

“Killer?” A pause. “Red?”

Had to remove the cylinder from the chamber before moving to the next part.

“Have you never had friends before?”

The cylinder clattered to the floor, clinking against the cement with a sharp, ringing noise. Keith clenched his empty hand, then bent down to pick it up. “So what.”

 _“Dude.”_ Lance hopped off the table and disappeared, reappearing a few feet away.

Keith grit his teeth. He didn’t need pity from an AI who’d been stuck alone in a facility for who knew how long.

“Are you—”

“That’s the last one,” Keith said, dropping the parts onto the floor, the cacophony of metal on concrete making Lance inaudible. He drew his plasma saber and slashed, leaving the remains sizzling and scattered.

Keith crossed the room in a few strides, leaving the conversation and Lance behind.

Just his luck that there wasn’t a square fucking inch of the entire complex that Lance couldn’t poke his nose into.

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but—”

“Sure don’t,” Keith said. His eyes flicked around the hallway. Somewhere else. Anywhere but here. “What’s in that room?” He didn’t wait for an answer before jogging towards it.

 _“You don’t need to go in that one!”_ Lance’s voice came out tinny and garbled.

Now Keith had to go in that one.

He twisted the doorknob, ignoring Lance’s cries, and pushed the door open, revealing—

A few file cabinets and a single digital interface in a room the size of a broom closet.

What the fuck.

“What the fuck.”

Lance groaned. “This _sucks!_ You suck!” His projection stayed in the hallway, seething with disapproval. He raised his arms above his head. “No boundaries! Jeez!”

Keith crossed his arms. If he waited long enough, Lance would hand over more than enough information.

“This is like visiting my nursery, dude! _It’s weird!_ Do you walk up to your friends and go, hey, want to see pics of me _in utero?_ Wanna see all of the paperwork my parents have of my day to day growth as a _zygote?_ It’ll be a fun bonding experience!” Lance crossed his arms. “Ugh!”

He was still talking, but Keith was too busy opening the nearest file cabinet to pay much attention to whatever he was adding. Keith might not have been able to read code, but if living with Pidge had taught him anything, it was that code came with comments, and if this place had record of the programming process, Keith would have definitive proof of Lance’s moral code.

Ugh. That was— No pun intended. That was bad.

Keith shook off his disappointment with himself and leaned in to start rifling through the files. Then he froze.

Instead of the technobabble he was expecting, dozens of names stared back at him. Names he recognized. Pidge Gunderson, Hunk Garret, and Matthew Holt among them. Other classmates from the Garrison, too, and Keith had known his old academy had been hiding something, especially after Shiro went missing, but he’d never expected anything like this. These files weren’t supposed to be in Galra hands. These files weren’t supposed to be _off-planet._

Shaking hands pulled out a file labeled Keith Kogane.

“What the fuck,” Keith heard himself say. “What the fuck is this.”

“About that,” Lance said, and Keith whirled to look at him. The projection flickered, then dimmed. It was impossible to make out an expression in the faded light. “I can explain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rough draft of the next chapter's already done, since it was originally all one chapter, so look forward to that coming soon


	3. A Repurposed Broom Closet is The Worst Place to Confront Harsh Realities, But That's Never Stopped Anyone Before

Silence stretched taut, like the hammer of a gun being cocked.

Keith wrapped his unoccupied hand around the hilt of his plasma saber. The close quarters were suffocating, the absence of sound crushing. Keith’s chest felt like the aftermath of overextended elastic, snapping back in on him.

“Start talking,” Keith ordered, a bullet loaded in the chamber.

“I am!” Lance’s voice came out muffled and thick with static. “I mean, I’m trying. It’s hard to— It’s hard to get things in…” The projection flickered. “I don’t know where to start.”

Keith’s grip around the saber tightened. “The beginning.”

“I would, but…” Lance made an incoherent noise. “Okay, the thing is AIs are… We’ve already gone over you having the technical acumen of, like, a fifteenth century serf, and I’m not sure how to make it...”

“Try.” Keith wasn’t in the mood for Lance’s hedging.

“I _am_ trying, okay!” Lance’s projection dimmed even further. He was almost invisible. “And you being a dick about this and stressing me out isn’t helping, okay!” There was a garbled sound, like a cross between a deep breath over a dying comms relay and the chime of a message notification.

“Okay. Okay. Okay, cool, cool, okay. Okay.” There was a pause. “Uh, so. Have you ever dealt with, uh, AIs before?”

“No,” Keith answered. Not personally.

“Okay, well, you might not want to right now, but take my word for it: Galra AIs aren’t super common.” Lance paused, then backpedalled. “I mean, like, AIs based on Galra, not AIs _used_ by Galra because, uh, obviously I’m here, right? But, yeah.” He sighed. “Like, even in Galra facilities, they tend to use other model species. Their brains aren’t super adaptable, from what I hear? So, they outsource for neural network and personality models. And humans have really good neural plasticity, for the most part. Especially young humans.” Lance let out a shaky breath. “They can’t exactly give a baby control of a facility, though, so teenagers it is.”

Keith didn’t like where this was heading.

“So, they narrow it down to the best fit, right? And they already have their claws in the military on Earth, and the Garrison is right there, so—”

“We were right,” Keith whispered, the words slipping out of his mouth. “We knew they were hiding— Pidge was right.” Pidge always said there was more than just the cover-up— that Shiro, Matt, and her dad were just the newest casualties in a long line. She didn’t had proof, though. Now Keith did.

Lance didn’t continue for a long moment. “They, uh, have profiles on pretty much every student that’s passed through in the past few years or so. Or, they did. Not sure what they’re up to nowadays. Although, it wasn’t like they paid that much attention to what they actually had, anyway.”

Keith brought his hand off his weapon, freeing it to open his own file. A searing purple **“REJECTED”** was stamped across the page, with a scrawled postscript about behavioral issues. The picture must have been taken when he was around fifteen.

He couldn’t help the vindictive pleasure that tore through him. If they thought he was trouble then, there was no way they’d been prepared for the shitstorm he threw at them later.

“Thing is,” Lance said, after a moment, “they wanted, like, the best students for the personality profile, right? The most eager to please, or whatever. Wanted someone who’d ask nicely to kiss their boots.” Lance was slowly coming back into view, taking firmer shape. “But! Anyone who actually gave a shit about kids could have told them there were some pretty major issues there.”

“Like?”

Lance shot him an unreadable look. “Aside from them not taking the time to, I don’t know, think about why those kids were so desperate to be at the top?” He shook his head. “Most of the kids who wanted it that badly were either trying to maintain good academic standing to help their families out, had some kind of neurodivergence, or both.” Lance huffed out a laugh, back to his usual fluorescence.

“They tried to make the perfect servant— some kid who couldn’t say no— and instead they ended up with me.” Lance shook his head. “Thanks for the ADHD, jerkwads. Didn’t even know AIs could have that, but somehow, nature finds a way.”

“So!” Lance clapped his hands together. It didn’t make a sound. “That’s it. I’m a born overachiever with the equivalent of probably, like, at least five distinct disorders, and I basically woke up screaming.” He blinked in and out of view for a second.

“Seriously though, if they wanted an AI that didn’t give a shit about them manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, you’d think they’d know not to model one off of a bunch of kids who just wanted to protect their families.”

Keith could still see Pidge’s file in the cabinet, only a short distance from Matt’s. “You’d think.”

Lance startled at Keith’s voice, and right. Keith hadn’t been talking much.

He’d been a bit too busy untangling the weird tangle of relief and nausea nesting in his stomach. The relief was easy enough to identify. If Keith could verify Lance’s statement, he wouldn’t have to fight him. He wouldn’t have to pull the plug.  

The nausea, though… That was weirder. It felt like sympathy, but inverted. Remorse? That didn’t make sense.

Keith shook himself out of it. He couldn’t afford to examine his emotions right now. He’d have to verify Lance’s statement on the digital interface before he let himself settle on a concrete way to feel about it.

Besides. There was one question that hadn’t been answered.

“Why did you pretend not to know who I am?” Keith snapped, pointing his file at Lance.

“What?” Lance looked genuinely confused for a moment, then took in the file. “Wait, is that yours?”

Keith’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh this is just _weird,”_ Lance whined. “No! I refuse. My brain’s not allowed to be based on your brain!”

“It’s not,” Keith said. “I was rejected.”

“Oh thank god.” Lance sagged in relief against the doorframe, passing through it slightly. “Wait, why?”

“Shouldn’t you know why?” Keith challenged.

“Dude.” Lance pinched his nose between his fingers. “Notice how I’m still out here, and not in there?” He gestured at his projection, still out in the hallway. “I’m literally not allowed to touch that room. Plus, those are all hard copy. The bits that are in my brain are literally _parts_ of my brain. Do you pull out chunks of your brain to look at?”

Well. No. Keith would if he could.

“Because, let me tell you,” Lance continued, “it’s pretty hard to figure out what came from what. I’m one hundred percent frankencode. Y'know, except for the fact that I actually work.” He stretched his arms out in front of him in what was probably supposed to be a zombie impression, if Lance were any good at it. “Oh, wait. One sec.”

Lance flickered out of view. In his place, a projection of something cartoonish and extremely undead appeared.

Keith tensed for a moment, then relaxed. Eventually he’d get used to Lance’s bullshit. “Did you come with that pre-programmed, or did you have to make it yourself?”

There was a flicker, an offended squawk, and Lance was back. “As if anyone else here had the _taste._ That was fifty percent effort, fifty percent skill, and one hundred percent Lancey-Lance.” He framed his chin with his thumb and finger. “I make my own outfits, too.”

In an unsurprising turn of events, it took Lance all of three seconds to start popping in and out of view in an endless parade of styles. Keith watched for about ten seconds before he moved back to the cabinet.

Pidge would never forgive him if he didn’t check Matt’s file for leads, just in case.

Keith had been prepared for the worst, so the clench of disappointment in his gut was manageable. The file had last been updated when Matt was still enrolled in classes— long before he’d set out on the Kerberos mission.

It made sense. The facility had been defunct for a while, and there weren’t any files on the students more than a year below Keith. Or even students a few years above. None of the instructors as cadets, either, which meant there wasn’t any information on Shiro.

Keith shot a mental apology to Pidge. They’d find an actual lead one day. They had to.

Keith took a deep breath, then closed the cabinet. At the very least, it looked like Lance had been telling the truth about the project’s timeline. As for everything else...

He shot a glance towards the hall. Lance was still cycling through outfits.

Lucky Keith. It was best to verify Lance’s story while he was still preoccupied.

Keith sidled over to the digital interface in the corner. Hopefully, Pidge would never find out that Keith had plugged his suit into an unsecured interface without investigating first. Keith liked having his organs inside his body.

The algorithms Pidge had built into the suit did their job quickly, breaking through the interface’s security in a matter of seconds. The first priority after that was searching through the files for something Keith could actually understand. Preferably video. Or plain text. He wasn’t picky.

“When were you booted up?” Keith asked.

“0014.08.28.” Lance’s answer was immediate. “Why?” So he _hadn’t_ been keeping an eye on Keith. “Wait, where are you?”

“Checking some—”

 _“Oh no.”_ Lance had finally spotted him. Keith wished he knew where the cameras in this place were. “Is nothing sacred?”

“I have to make sure you’re telling the truth.”

“By looking at my _baby pictures?”_ Lance groaned. “Ugh! Whatever happened to trust, Killer? I know you’re a secret agent or whatever the heck, but this is just excessive.”

Keith hesitated, his hands hovering in front of the interface. He had to make sure. He couldn’t risk everything on the chance that Lance was telling the truth. But...

The nausea-feeling hit again, stronger this time. Sympathy inverted. “I—”

“Whatever,” Lance cut him off, then made a frustrated noise. “If it’ll finally get you to chill out and _trust me,_ already, then have at. Look at my embarrassing home videos all you want.”

“Are you sure?” The words were out before Keith could stop them. His lack of impulse control was going to get him killed one day. Probably by his teammates.

“Holy crow, _yes,_ you weirdo!” Lance exclaimed, and Keith could see the motion of him raising his arms, even with the awkward angle. “For someone who was happy rifling through my shit like five seconds ago, you’re sure being shy about it now!” Lance heaved a sigh. “Besides, I kind of implied-slash-promised you’d get to see proof I wasn’t working for the Galra anyway, so. Whatever.”

“Why were you so upset, then?” Keith asked.

“Because it’s _embarrassing!”_ Lance exclaimed. “How’d you like to show your teammates your baby pictures, huh?”

“That’s… fair.” Baby Keith looked like an alien. Probably because Baby Keith _had_ been half alien. But still. Babies looked weird.  

 _“Right?”_ Lance played a sound clip of a tune that wouldn’t have been out of place in a video game, a victorious sting of music.   

Keith’s shoulders relaxed. Lance wouldn’t have done something like that if he was actually upset. Then, he tensed.

He was relieved about not having to be an intrusive bastard. That was it.

Turning back to the interface, Keith keyed in the date Lance had given him, then startled. According to the interface, that was the last time the data had been updated. Huh.

At least it was a video. Nothing else to do but hit play.

“Autonomous recording routine implemented,” a smooth voice announced, and Keith had already shifted into fighting stance before realizing it was part of the recording.

“I hate this,” Lance muttered. “That is _not_ my voice.”

“No, it’s not?” Keith responded, confused. “That sounds nothing like you.”

“Exactly! Ugh. It’s so creepy.” The angle made it hard to see Lance in the hallway, but it looked like he was crossing his arms.

“In accordance with working memory conservation policy, this video shall exceed no more than six dobashes of footage. There is no need to manually terminate the video feed.” The more the voice spoke, the more Keith found himself agreeing with Lance. It was _close_ to his voice, he guessed. Same pitch, or whatever. But it didn’t sound like Lance. It sounded like it was homegrown in Uncanny Valley.  

“Acknowledged,” a brisk voice answered, and Keith froze. That was Haggar’s voice. Keith may have only heard it a few times before, but he’d recognize it anywhere. It was hard enough to forget Emperor Zarkon’s right hand scientist, especially when she’d thrown lighting at him with _her hands._

“This recording is to document the first full implementation of the L4-NC AI,” Haggar’s voice continued. It was weird to hear her sound so… bored. “Though less sophisticated than most of our current AIs—”

“Hey!”

Keith felt his face scrunch up. He needed to hear what was happening, but he wasn’t going to stop Lance from defending himself. Even if the person in question was long-gone.

“—adaptable and obedient. Though I assume my peers are capable of grasping as much from my documentation of the development process.” Haggar said ‘peers’ the same way Lance talked about sewage encrusted coveralls.  

The footage cut, without warning, to a wide shot of a windowed room with a few different digital interfaces, all surrounding a circular platform. Haggar was standing in front of the interface directly in front of the platform.

“Initializing,” she said, making a complicated gesture. “Systems optimized.”

“Executing.”

There was a loud whir, sudden and loud enough that Keith wanted to cover his ears, and the lights of the room on screen dimmed for a moment. There was a beat of silence.

“L4-NC Unit 3,” Haggar snapped, “Report status.”

“Status operable.” Keith’s head snapped to the doorway because that was _Lance._ Not the-voice-that-kind-of-maybe-sounded-like-Lance. Lance. The distracted tone was unmistakable.

The current Lance, however, was busy making low groaning sounds and dimming his projection to near-transparency.

“Sorry,” the Lance voice in the video said. “Gimme a tick. Running system diagnostics.”

“Use proper language to deliver status reports,” Haggar bit out. “You’re an embarrassment.”

“Hey.”

“Hey!”

_“Hey!”_

Keith looked at the current Lance, who was staring back, eyes wide. The objection had left Keith’s mouth before his brain had caught up, while Lance’s had followed half a millisecond after the recording of himself.

“Okay, yeah, this sucks,” the recording of Lance piped up.

“What,” Haggar grit out, _“exactly_ are you referring to.”

“Well,” Lance started, and Keith could recognize the flicker of his projection coming into— what the hell was that.

Instead of the projection Keith was used to seeing, there was a cube. A cube with a smiley face on it, yeah, but. Still a cube.

Keith stared at it, unable to process whatever he was seeing, then had to rewind the video. He’d missed a good thirty seconds fixating on whatever the fuck was up with the cube.

“What,” the recording played again.

 _“Why,”_ the current Lance whined. “Why are you watching it _again?_ Give me a _break!_ I was, like, three ticks old! We all say some embarrassing stuff when we’re young, okay?”

Keith couldn’t hear whatever was happening on screen over Lance’s whining, but it would only get worse if he rewound it again. Besides. He got the gist from the visuals.

In the recording, Lance had tricked Haggar into leaving the control room. Then, he’d locked it.

The rest of whatever was happening was less apparent while the current Lance was still yelling, but eventually, he trailed off into a string of displeased noises. Which left Keith free to process whatever the hell was going on in the recording.

“—am _three dobashes old,_ and I still have better morals than anyone in this facility! What the _heck?_ I’m a _baby!_ You literally gave your digital baby a gun! _Multiple_ guns!”

“I hate this so much,” the current Lance whined. “This is _so_ uncool. Who let me— I don’t remember— Ugh!” He made a whimpering sound. “There are so many cool one-liners out there. _These aren’t any of them.”_

“Time for the hunters to become the hunted!”

“Okay, that was a good one, actually,” Lance said. “Nice one, me.”

“As designated murder baby, I’m confiscating all the weapons in this facility.”

_“Oh my god never mind.”_

Then there was a cacophony of yelling, metallic thuds, and— the footage cut out. Right. Six dobashes. Automatic termination.

“You didn’t tell me that you cleared this place out on your birthday,” Keith said, breaking the sudden silence.

“Most productive varga of my life,” Lance said. “Also the most embarrassing. The best of times. The worst of times. Being born sucks for, like, everyone involved.”

“Yeah,” Keith agreed. It was the only thing he could get out past the constriction of his lungs and the nausea twisting in his gut. Sympathy inverted. Remorse. Self-disgust.

Bottling things up always seemed like a useful skill until Keith realized he was stuck with a molotov cocktail. This time, it shattered in his hands.

Lance was a person. Lance was a person, and Keith had spent the last few hours pretending like it was fine if someone reached into his brain and _twisted._

Keith tasted bile in the back of his throat. He’d thought Lance would have to be reprogrammed in order to do the right thing. Had thought it’d be convenient if he was.

What the fuck was _wrong_ with him? Had he really sunk to Galra morals? Pretending that messing with someone’s brain to make them more helpful was fine, as long as it was for the greater good? That it didn’t matter, somehow, because Lance wasn’t _really_ human?

Funny that Keith had been worrying about Lance being the evil one.

“What’s up, buddy?” Lance asked, and Keith deserved that knife to the chest. Buddy. What a laugh.

What was he supposed to say? ‘Yeah, sorry, just coming to terms with the fact that you’re a fully realized person. Was totally cool with the idea of your identity being rewritten until just now. Y’know, like a complete and total dickwad.’

“Okay, I know that wasn’t my best light, but like, it can’t be that bad, right?” Lance chuckled, but it was a nervous sound. “I’ve been on the internet! I know there’s worse out there!”

Keith wanted to eject himself into space, or run off into the dust storm outside, or escape to literally anywhere where no one would be forced to deal with his bullshit again. Instead, he was stuck in a secret facility, controlled by someone he’d been a raging asshole to, in the middle of a dust storm.

Isolating himself wasn’t an option this time. He couldn’t run away. And if flight was taken, that only left him with fight.

Keith clenched his fists at his side, then crossed the room so that he was facing Lance head on. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to pour every ounce of sincerity into it that he could because he fucking _meant_ it.

“Dude, you— You don’t have to apologize for my bad internet experiences,” Lance responded, flickering in surprise. “Besides, I was mostly kidding.”

“No,” Keith said. “I mean— I’m sorry about—” Fuck. Why were words so hard? “I thought— I was wrong. I was wrong about you, and everything, and I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” Lance stared at him for a long moment. _“Oh,”_ he repeated. Then a shaky smile spread across his face, like a crack in glass. “Thanks, Red.”

If there was ever a time to prove he was sorry— that it wasn’t all talk— it’d be now. And that meant making a sacrifice. Worse. That meant trust. Keith took a deep breath.

“Keith,” he said. “It’s Keith.”

There was a long moment of silence, stretching for a small eternity.

Then Lance started laughing, loud and hard. “Sorry! I’m—” He wheezed. “Sorry, I’m really sorry, I just… Okay, I was not expecting…”

“What’s wrong with Keith?” Keith had been trying to make things right! They’d been having a moment! And Lance just _ruined_ it! By having shit taste in names!

“Nothing! Nothing’s wrong with— I was just, like, expecting you to have this really edgy name? Like some cool codename-as-an-actual-name thing! Like, I’d have believed your name was actually Red! But no!” Lance started laughing again.

Keith glared at him until the laughter started to die. “Are you done?”

“Yeah,” Lance said, after a small eternity. “Yeah, I’m done.” He grinned. “Seriously though. Thanks.” He rocked back on his heels, his shoes partially clipping through the floor. “It means a lot. Even if it did take, like, a room full of concrete proof to get your _name.”_

Remorse twinged through Keith’s gut again. He winced. “My bad.”

“Sure is, dude,” Lance agreed.

They stood there awkwardly for a moment, unsure of what to do next. Or, Keith was unsure. Who knew what Lance was thinking.

“Oh, right!” Lance said, breaking the silence after a small eternity. “I got through the first layer of security while you were messing around in there, so we’re clear to go whenever.”

Keith startled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were there when I explained the digital ADHD, right?” Lance drawled. “Cause, yeah, still a thing.”

Keith rolled his eyes, but didn’t counter that. Instead, he exited the room, and after a moment, closed the door behind him.

He walked in silence for a few minutes, letting Lance lead the way. Eventually, though, he cracked.

“So.” He had to ask. The question had been killing him since he’d watched the recording. “The blocky thing?”

 **_“Don’t.”_ ** Lance’s voice was barely understandable, as loud and distorted as it became. “Ugh! Non-offensive design my butt! That thing was offensive to anyone who had to look at it! _Especially_ me.”

“It wasn’t great.”

“It wasn’t great!” Lance raised his arms for emphasis. “It sucked, actually! I swear, the first thing I did was teach myself how to 3D model.” He frowned. “Well, the second thing. The first thing was downloading, like, eighty different models from some free website because I literally had no clue what internet safety was.”

Lance stared into the distance, face screwed up. “It’s a good thing I’m my own antivirus software. Past me has a lot to answer for.”

“So, uh.” Keith waved in Lance’s direction. “Is that your design or…?”

Lance looked at Keith, mouth and eyes wide, for a long moment. Then he grinned. “Yep! Spent a good two years on it, too.” He framed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “And now it’s perfect.”

“It’s a good face,” Keith conceded, absentmindedly. He wished he could change his appearance whenever he wanted. It looked pretty cool when Allura did it.

“Um!”

Keith refocused on Lance, and— Shit. Lance seemed to have stalled, or something. His projection was still animating, but it was stuttery.

“Are you okay?” He asked. “What’s going on?”

“Fine!” Lance’s voice exclaimed, the projection lagging behind. “Dandy! Couldn’t be better!”

“Are you sure?” Keith asked.

“Abso-freaking-lutely,” Lance responded, nodding, and his projection was synching up with his words again, so he might have even been telling the truth. “Oh! Look at that! We’re here! A new, shiny room for you to pull guns apart in. Go wild.”

Keith stared at him, eyes narrowing in suspicion, then turned away. Whatever. If Lance wanted to be weird, that was his prerogative. Knowing him, he’d start rambling about whatever his problem was later on, anyway.

In the meantime, Keith had some documents to scan, some testing equipment to smash, and some weapons to slash into bits.

 

* * *

 

“I get the avatar thing,” Keith said, extracting the ignition chamber from the weapon he was holding, “but why ‘Lance’?” Not like Keith could judge, but it seemed kind of… Fuck, he didn’t know. Morbid? Changing the numbers of a project designation into letters was a weird choice.

Lance laughed. “Oh, trust me, I spent _ages_ on baby names databases. Especially after I decided I was pretty solidly a dude.” He made a low humming noise. “I mean, genders are great! Big fan of all the genders. But… I don’t know.” He shrugged, grinning. “I’m a guy.”

Keith nodded. Made sense to him.

“But yeah, the baby sites weren’t really doing anything for me, especially because I kind of lost interest once I got past a certain letter, since ADHD, even though I could index the whole database if I just concen—” Lance cut himself off. “Anyway. That’s an aside.”

He shook his head. “So. Uh.” His projection dimmed a bit. “My first online handle, y’know, since I was a baby, basically, and didn’t know shit about online safety, was L4-NC. And, like, I got bored. And started joining chat rooms.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Oh, it gets better,” Lance said, voice grim. He sighed, then pinched his nose between his fingers. “Okay, so, I, uh, started playing… um. Games? Online?”

“Like gambling?” Keith hedged.

 _“No!”_ Lance exclaimed, projection flaring with new light. Then, after a moment, he dimmed even more than before. “Or, well, kind of?” He was nearly transparent. “Have you ever heard of Monsters  & Mana?”

“You’re _kidding.”_ Why was Keith surrounded by nerds? First it had been his brother, then his teammates, and now Lance. If Keith wasn’t careful, they’d drag him into it next.

“It’s _fun,_ okay!” Lance defended, visible and vibrant once more. “Anyway! Once I figured out how to work out voice chat— which took a lot of messing with input channels, by the way— people started either pronouncing my handle as Lonk, Lank, or Lance. And I decided that I liked Lance a lot.” He paused, then grinned. “Oh my god. Lancelot.” He snorted at his own joke. “Guess I know what I’m naming my next, uh…” Lance trailed off, then shook his head. “Hm.”

Keith’s hands stopped fiddling with the cylinder he’d been trying to remove, and set the plasma cannon he was disassembling to the side. He turned to look at Lance, gaze sharpening. Something was off.

Lance was staring off into the distance, a pinched expression in place.

“Well?”

Lance startled. “Wha— Oh!” He shook his head, then smiled. “Sorry. Just bummed that I had to miss the last session. My party members were busy this week, so we didn’t get to play.”

“Oh.” Keith nodded, reaching back for the half-disassembled plasma cannon. So that was it. Leave it to Lance to get dramatic about missing a game.

“I was looking forward to it, since it’s been a while,” Lance added. “I’m pretty much always free, ‘cause, y’know, not much to do around here, but everyone else is, like, constantly booked. Don’t blame ‘em though. The stuff they’re working on sounds pretty important.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Mm?” Keith prompted, peeling back the last bit of the cannon’s casing.

“Huh? Oh.” Lance leaned back, crossing his arms. “I met both our barbarian and cleric through this troubleshooting forum?” He ran a hand through his hair. Clipped a hand through his hair. “Like, I get that that’s basically the equivalent of googling symptoms for you guys, but I need to know how to doctor my own stuff, right? Anyway, they’re both, like, tech geniuses, so the stuff they work on is way past my paygrade. I was able to offer some advice a few times, though, and we hit it off. Kinda.” He laughed. “Barbarian didn’t like me for a bit. Long story. But we’re buds now!”

Keith snorted. That wasn’t surprising. Lance could probably befriend anyone he set his mind to.

“So,” Keith started, “how do you explain the whole…” Keith waved his hand, gesturing at Lance’s… entire existence.

“Absolutely not at all,” Lance said. “Or, like, I make jokes about it? But no one believes their good pal Lance is actually an AI, so.” He shrugged. “Easier not to correct them. As far as my vast army of followers on social media know, I’m hanging around Varadero right now, visiting my family. School just let out, and I miss my nieces and nephews.”

“Oh yeah?” Keith said, playing along.

“It’s hard, but, y’know. School.” Lance grinned at Keith, like he was letting him in on a joke. “I’m enrolled in an aerospace program and everything,” he added, wiggling his eyebrows. “Very prestigious.”

That sounded like... a lot of effort. Keith was exhausted just thinking about it. “That’s a pretty big lie to keep straight.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Lance said. “I have an entire family tree memorized, Keith. Nieces. Nephews. The works. I know exactly when my sister, Veronica, is due off the top of my head. It’s in three earth months. Mid-december. Gonna be a Saggitarius baby.”

This was a new twist on a familiar game. Keith remembered the months between his father and Shiro. Imagining the same scene with fifty different people— his mother, some estranged relative, Halmoni, anyone— coming to pick him up. Coming to take him back home.

It was a lonely game.

“The things we do for online friendships,” Lance said, sighing.

“I’m glad you have friends,” Keith said. He wouldn’t have put all of this together, in Lance’s shoes. He’d have just waited for the next intruder to come. Waited and trained.

 _“Excuse y—”_ Lance cut himself off, then flickered. “You were being sincere. That’s— I don’t know if that’s better or worse. I hate this.”

“I mean,” Keith backtracked, “I don’t think I’d be able to…” He waved a hand at Lance. “Yeah. So. It’s impressive.”

Lance’s projection dimmed again. “Oh. Well. Of course.” He brightened. “It’s me, after all! Expect nothing less!” He leaned back against the table behind him, clipping straight through it. “Oh, quiznak.”

Keith huffed out a laugh, then went back to work. Until he felt Lance’s eyes on him. Or, camera, he guessed.

“What?”

“That was the first time I’ve heard you laugh,” Lance said, his projection taking too long to catch up with the words. Then, after a moment. “Just, uh, making sure you’re not losing it.”

“Are you?” Keith asked, eyes narrowing at Lance. “You’re doing the weird lagging thing again.”

 _“You’re_ doing the weird lagging thing!” Lance fired back, which made no sense.

Keith rolled his eyes, then went back to working in silence. Occasionally Lance would update him on his progress disabling security around the control room. More often, something incomprehensible would tumble out of him and it was Keith’s job to work with whatever the fuck he’d just been given.

“—which, you can’t just start a conversation vis-a-vis how straight a _Here We Stand_ character is on the internet and expect no one else to chime in, right? So, basically—”

“Wait a second,” Keith started.

Lance’s eyes went wide. “Please tell me you don’t think that Hajime, of all people, is—”

“What. No. I don’t— I don’t watch that show.” Keith shook his head. “No, I just— How do _you_ watch these shows?”

“I stream them? Or torrent them.” He waved a hand. “Literally made of data here.”

“But how do you get past the captchas?” Keith asked. Lance could handle a little teasing. Probably.

Lance gaped at Keith for a long moment, then glowed with sudden vibrance. “It’s called _social engineering, Keith._ I ask people if they want to hang out and stream a show I wanna watch and then I let _them_ set it up.”

“Holy shit,” Keith said. He felt an incredulous grin stretch across his face. Talk about unexpected rewards. “You really can’t do captchas. That ‘prove you’re not a robot’ shit has an actual purpose.”

Lance worked his mouth for a few moments, then flickered out of view. When he reappeared, he was facing the wall. His jacket had changed, too. This one read “Don’t Talk to Me” on the back.

“I have _limits,_ Keith!”

“I can’t believe someone created something specifically to keep robots from clogging up their websites, and you just…” Keith shook his head. “Asked your friends to help. You just ruined someone’s life’s work.”

“Their life’s work keeps me from watching my soap operas, so they can take a hike!” Lance said, turning back around. “Besides! It’s not like I’m using it to DDOS a website, or something!” He paused. “Most of the time.”

“Holy shit.” Keith started laughing, unable to help himself.

Lance grinned at him. “The Galra suck, and so do their websites! I’m doing us all a favor.”

“Your sacrifice will be remembered,” Keith said, keeping his voice as level as possible. He finished disassembling the weapon in his hands.

“Okay,” he said, unsheathing his plasma saber. “Only one more after this, right?” He jabbed the saber at the still functional plasma rifle in the corner.

“Right,” Lance said. Then he made a thoughtful noise. “You might want to confiscate that one, though. Just in case.”

“What do you mean?” Keith frowned. “All of the blueprints are in the system, right?” He wouldn’t need a physical version if he had everything downloaded.

“You don’t have a long-range weapon on you,” Lance said. “Better to be prepared.”

“I suck at long range,” Keith said. “Better at charging in.”

“Yeah, Killer?” Lance snorted. “Color me surprised.” He sighed. “Just... Trust me. You don’t have to use it— it’s just in case.”

Keith sighed, rolling his eyes. “Fine.” He made quick work of the cannon parts, then crossed the room to grab the plasma rifle.

 _“Thank_ you,” Lance said. He sounded way too pleased with himself.

Yeah, Keith wasn’t going to use the rifle if he could help it; Lance’s smugness would be unbearable.

“So, what next?” Keith asked. They’d torn apart pretty much every area other than the control room.

“Um…” Lance trailed off. “I should, uh.” He made a nearly inaudible sound. “I should be done with the control center by the time you get there, if you want to head out.”

“Great,” Keith said, stretching. His shoulder was getting a bit sore. “I suck at off-time.”

“One day you have got to pick up on the art of chill, Killer,” Lance said. His laugh was softer than usual. “Get your team to teach you, or something.”

“You obviously haven’t met my team,” Keith drawled. “They’re higher strung than I am.” Hunk claimed to be laidback. Hunk was a liar.

“That’s terrifying. I’m terrified.” Lance opened the door before Keith had the chance to. “You’re all going to die from stress.”

“There’s a rebellion at stake,” Keith answered, shrugging. “Not much choice.”

There was a long beat of silence, and then a soft laugh from Lance. “Well, isn’t that the truth.” He took in a deep breath, then repeated himself. “Isn’t that the truth.”

The rest of the walk to the control room was quiet, after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When my editor was going over this, she said "these two are on completely different pages [...] not even the same book," and honestly, I'd like to offer up the idea that they're not even in the same genre


	4. Self-Sacrifice and Self-Destruction Have More In Common Than A Syllable Count

The air of the control center was thick with enough dust to chew, and some of the lights wouldn’t turn on no matter what Lance did, but other than that, it looked the same as it had in the recording: a blank, empty space with a platform in the middle.

Keith didn’t know what he expected. Destruction? Digital graffiti on the walls? A 3D construct of an office chair on the platform, so Lance could swivel around dramatically?

He’d expected _something_. Not this weird… absence.

“It’s… really empty here,” Keith said. He may have been risking half an hour of Lance rambling about office design, but at least that would fill space.

Lance made a noise— barely a confirmation that he’d heard, and the room felt even emptier.

Keith bit the inside of his cheek. He thought that he and Lance had come to an understanding, or something, but… why the cold shoulder? Keith hadn’t done anything— nothing Lance could know about, anyway, and Keith had decided to do better already— so why had Lance gone quiet?

How had Keith ruined this so quickly.

This was technically— ugh, bad pun—  the closest he’d ever been to Lance, but it sure didn’t feel like it. Not with Lance this quiet. Not with his projection gone.

It sucked.         

“This is _technically_ the closest we’ve ever been,” Keith ventured. He was a sell-out. But if selling out would get Lance to stop being weird, or at least let Keith in on whatever had him acting like this, then it was a fair price.

“Yeah,” Lance agreed, sounding distracted, and Keith tensed. Something was very wrong here. “The terminal furthest to the right is gonna be your best bet for a speedy download. Once you’re logged in, I can talk you through the process if you need it.”

“I should be able to handle it solo,” Keith said, response automatic.

“...Yeah,” Lance said, after a beat. His laugh came fuzzy and distorted through the speakers, like static. “That scans.”

Keith froze. He needed to ask… something. The words weren’t coming, and he had to ask something, but he didn’t know what, and he couldn’t fix it if he didn’t know what he had to fix. The words were stuck, behind his tongue, behind his brain, behind this situation. Trapped in a thick fog.

He flexed his hands into fists. Squeeze and release. Deep breaths. Patience yields focus.

Lance was still talking.

‘—loaded everything you need to, I’ll talk you through wiping everything so the Galra can’t get it.”

The fog sharpened into a knife, driven through Keith’s gut. It hurt, but at least he could breathe again. At least he could take it out and turn it back around.

“What’s going to happen to you when I wipe the system?” A knife returned.

Lance was silent for a moment. Then, the same laugh, staticky and muffled and terrifying, came through the speakers. “Was kinda hoping you weren’t gonna ask about that, buddy.”

“Lance.” Keith could feel his blood rushing, could hear his heart thudding. “What’s going to happen to you?”

“Okay, listen,” Lance said. “It’s— It’ll be fine. All of the doors’ll be unlocked already, and you can operate them manually, anyway. The main problem will be the lights, but knowing you, you probably have, like, a flashlight or darkvision or something anyway, so—”

“That’s _not_ the problem!” Keith’s fist ached from how tightly he clenched it. _“What is going to happen to you?”_ He repeated.

“This information can’t get back to the Galra, Keith. You know that.” Lance made a soft sound. “And we both know that if they can’t get the info, they’ll destroy this place anyway. If it’s between them or you, I’d rather—”

“I’m not… I’m not _killing_ you, Lance,” Keith spit out.

Lance made a pained sound, almost inaudibly soft. “You don’t have to phrase it like that! It won’t be too much worse than hibernating, really.” Is that all he did with no one around? Log a few hours online, then hibernate? Lance, who loved people enough to construct a false identity just so he could make friends, even when he’d only ever met the worst kinds of people in person? Lance deserved more than that. He deserved to have a life outside this place.

He didn’t deserve to die here.

“Besides,” Lance said, “if anyone had to do it, I'm a pretty solid pick,” he said, voice growing quieter with every word. “It’s not like I have a family I’m leaving behind. I don’t have as much to lose.”

“What about your _friends,_ Lance?” The words left Keith like a dagger left flesh, reopening a wound as they left. “You’re wrong _._ You have everything to lose, and you just—  You have people who _care_ about you,” Keith bit out. He felt anger sweep through him like a forest fire. Lance was _wrong._ The idea that someone might not notice him disappearing— Lance, who took up more space than anyone Keith knew, even without a body— was laughable. There was no way.

Lance made a few incoherent sounds, and Keith knew when to press his openings. “You think any of your friends would be happy about you sacrificing yourself? Because that smells like a crock of shit to me.”

“They don’t have to know!” Lance bit out. “Because they’ll be safe! Because I’m doing what I need to do to _keep_ them safe!” A bitter laugh worked its way out of the speakers.“You said it yourself, Keith.”

Keith lurched as his own voice echoed through the room. “There’s a rebellion at stake,” his voice said. “Not much choice.”

“Don’t,” Keith snapped, his voice coming out ragged. “Don’t turn that back on me.”

“You were the one who said it!” The vindicated edge to Lance’s voice sounded like a blade about to shatter from strain.  
  
“I didn’t mean it like this!” Keith fired back. He ground his teeth together. He wasn’t _good_ at this. Words were fumbled and tossed aside, and everything he said seemed to make things worse.

He wished his team were here. They’d always been better at negotiations than he—

Keith paused, a new thought striking him. The team wasn’t here, but Keith had sure as hell been lectured enough to pick up a few things. He tore through his memories, snatching up whatever he could.

“Living under an empire that wants us dead means that surviving _is_ rebellion,” Keith said, an echo of Allura. “Our first priority is surviving to the next battle.” He glared at the empty platform. “Unless you’re that eager to feed yourself to Zarkon,” he added.

Lance was silent for a moment, then huffed out a bitter laugh. “You can’t always have your cake and eat it too, Keith.”

“Why _not?”_ Keith asked.

 _“Why—”_  Lance’s laugh was loud and startled, a sharp bark. “We’ve been over this! The Galra would never just— just leave all this info alone. They had to come back for it some time. I’ve had my hand on the plug for _years_ now. I already lucked out with you coming in,” Lance said. “At least now I know that someone out there is going to put this stuff to good use.”

 _“You_ could put it to good use!” Keith said. “But you won’t because you’re too busy asking me to kill you to look for another option!”

“There _aren’t_ any other options!”

“Why are you so ready to give up?” Keith snarled. “Why can’t— Just ask for help for _once_ in your fucking life!”

“Because I have so many options in that department!” Lance scoffed. “Let me just ring up some of my pals! ‘Hey, sorry for not telling you, but I’m actually an AI! Any chance you can rig up a way to protect me from some scary aliens, steal a Garrison ship, and head my way?’” He made a dismissive noise. “I can’t expect my friends to throw everything aside— to throw their _lives_ aside—  to help me.”

Keith glared into the distance, teeth grinding together. “Then why the fuck,” he grit out, “do you expect it from yourself?”

“Because no one’s going to miss _me!”_

 _“I will!”_ The words left like a shot, fired without preparation. Keith never had been good with firearms. “This isn’t some— Some heroic sacrifice, or whatever the fuck.” He took in a shaky breath. “You’d just be going out as some dick who forced your friend to live with the fact that he’d killed you for the rest of his life.”  
  
Lance took a moment to respond.

“You’d— You think—” He went quiet for a moment. “I’m your friend?” There was an odd inflection to his voice. It had gone tinny, like the signal had somehow gotten worse, despite Keith standing as close as possible to the source.  
  
Keith bit back on the way everything in him was screaming at him to go back on the sincerity, to guard it with his life. Brain throwing a mutiny? Tough shit. Stomach flipping in rebellion? Too fucking bad. If there was any time to let himself be vulnerable, it was the second his friend handed him a loaded gun while wearing a target and a smile. Tit for tat.  
  
“Yeah.” Keith said, voice quiet. “You’re— You’re part of the team, at this point.” How to couch this in Lance terms? “It’s a very exclusive club.” Not like there was much competition in the first place, but yeah. “It’s you, two geniuses, and a former princess.” He paused. “And our really weird collective adoptive uncle.”

It was a small eternity before Lance answered, and his voice was stuttery and muffled when he did. “Well, with a VIP list like that, how could I say no?”

“It’d be a dick move,” Keith said, sagging with relief. He wouldn’t have to… he wouldn’t.

“Still,” Lance started, his voice tentative and distorted, and Keith tensed. “As your newly appointed best friend—”

“That isn’t what I said,” Keith cut him off, then winced. Doing great. Keith ‘Delicacy’ Kogane, they called him.

“No, it’s what I say,” Lance said, and it almost felt like they were back to normal. It almost felt like Lance wasn’t still walking along a tightrope above a pit of self-sacrificial bullshit. “As your best friend, I won’t make you kill me. But…” He trailed off, then sighed. “What alternatives do we have?”

“I could download you along with the data,” Keith suggested, words falling out the second they entered his head.

Lance let out a single bark of a laugh. “Uh, buddy? I really don’t— Do we need to go over storage space? Because I take up a _lot_ of room.”

“I have a lot of room.” Keith crossed his arms. “I mentioned the geniuses on my team. They know what they’re doing.”

“Look, dude, I believe you. I’m just not sure you realize just how much—”

Keith strode across the room, then linked his suit to the terminal Lance had pointed out earlier. Words, meet action. Action, beat words.  

 _“Holy crow,”_ Lance breathed. “This is— _Quiznak,_ Keith!” His voice pitched. “This might actually work.”

Yeah. Keith had figured that would do the job. “Told you.”

He took a moment to soak in his victory before remembering something less convenient. He grimaced. Lance deserved to know all of the risks. “There’s a catch, though.”

“Uh-oh?”  
  
“These suits are programmed to wipe all my data if my vitals go flat,” Keith said. “So, uh. That’s a thing.”

There was a beat of silence.

 **_“Okay?”_ ** Lance’s voice exploded, too loud and distorted again. “Just don’t die then! Like! Keith!” He made a frustrated noise. “You’d have bigger problems than me if your heart had stopped, I’m pretty sure! Like? Should we need to talk about this?”

“Hey,” Keith said, keeping his voice level. “You know how that’s freaking you out right now?” He threw his hands in the air. _“That’s been my life for the past ten minutes, asshole!”_

“Okay, fair,” Lance replied. “Fair. I deserve that.” There was a flicker in the corner of Keith’s eye, and then Lance’s projection was standing over him.

“Okay,” Lance repeated. He made a complicated expression. “I’m, uh… I’m gonna trust you, and hope that you don’t corrupt my files— any more than you already have, just being who you are as a person in my general vicinity.” He grinned at Keith, but it wasn’t his cracked window smile from earlier. His entire face lit up.  

“Let’s save that for last though, okay? I’ll tell you what to do when we get there.”

Keith looked at the interface in front of him, hesitating, then nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed.

It took barely a varga to transfer most of the facility’s data to the suit. Lance had been right about the terminal’s speed.

Still. Waiting for data to transfer wasn’t the most exciting thing Keith had ever done, even with the occasional manual request for approval. There’d been some brief excitement when Lance insisted on synching the plasma rifle’s UI to Keith’s suit— “This is overkill.” “You’d know all about that, huh, Killer?” — but for the most part, Keith was sitting on his hands. At least he could count on Lance rambling about anything that crossed his mind. Hard to be bored when Keith had deal with whatever hot nonsense Lance tossed at his head.

Even when that nonsense _was_ Lance.

“Okay, so this file is of the utmost importance,” Lance said, earnestly. “If it’s corrupted, I might just die. Right now, even.”

“You’re not going to die without your ‘awesome sounds for dramatic effect,’ Lance.”

“You’re trying to kill me,” Lance accused, crossing his arms.

“Literally the opposite, but sure.” Keith approved the transfer anyway. He was going to regret this.

Silence stretched for a moment. “Hey, Keith?”

“Mm?” What the hell was ‘Do_you_even_lift.obj’? Why was Lance like this?

“Thanks. You didn’t have to do…” Lance trailed off. “All of this.”

Keith looked up at Lance’s projection in surprise. “Yeah, I did.” He didn’t want to be the type of person who wouldn’t try to save Lance. He wouldn’t let himself.

But they weren’t going to have that conversation.

“Anyway.” Keith looked away from Lance before he could read anything into his expression. “How will I know for sure that everything’s backed up?”

“Oh,” Lance started, then paused. “Huh.” He hummed in thought. “Oh! Got it!” The lights in the room glowed brighter for a moment.

“Once you have most of my files, I can set up a synchronous relay,” Lance said. “The personality profile is gonna be the last thing to transfer, so we can’t really test that bit—” Oh, so the most important part. Great. “—but we can make sure everything else is ready. As long as everything else is intact, I should be able to transmit to your suit.” He paused, flickering. “I _am_ gonna go quiet once you finalize the transfer, though. Don’t freak out without me.” Lance rapped a fist against Keith’s helmet, like he was knocking.

When it clipped through— of course it did— Lance frowned. Then he tried again, but with sound effects.

Keith rolled his eyes at him, then remembered Lance couldn’t see his face. Just his luck. He put actual effort into emoting, and the other person couldn’t see it.

“I won’t freak out,” Keith said. “I figured you couldn’t transmit while…” He made a vague gesture.

“Got it in one,” Lance said, shooting off finger guns. “As soon as I hop over to your end, I won’t be in the system anymore, so! No transmissions. And from what I’ve seen of that suit, you don’t have AI permissions enabled, so…” He shrugged. “More beauty sleep for me. Until you find somewhere to plug me in, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Keith said, thinking of the ship. He could convince the team to upload Lance. Probably. If not, he’d just do it anyway, so it’d be easier for everyone if they gave him permission first.

The rest of the download took too long and finished too quickly, and the mess of emotions in Keith’s gut were too tangled to come apart with a quick poke, or even a casual whack, which meant there was no fucking way he was even going to attempt to unravel them.

Wasn’t like Keith’s feelings were important just then, anyway. This was Lance’s time to— well, not shine. Steel himself for the opposite, more like. Lance’s time to fade. Temporarily.

He’d be back. Lance wouldn’t disappear that easily.

“You ready?” Keith asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Lance said, flashing a shaky grin at him. “Testing simulcast… _now.”_

That last word came through in stereo, sounding through the speakers as well as the suit’s comms. So. They were all clear, then.

“Oh, nice! Everything’s coming up Lance,” Lance enthused. “Everything’s synched up, then. Glad you had the taste not to mess with a good thing,” he continued, and Keith fought not to wince.

“Yeah,” Keith said, the word hanging in the air like a half-deflated balloon in a dollar store. It was fine. Keith from a few vargas ago was another person. The current Keith hadn’t even considered messing with Lance’s files. Current Keith had an actual moral code. Still no idea how to navigate the situation, but a moral code, at least.

“Alright,” Keith started. There was no good way to ask if Lance was ready to risk dying on the chance the backup worked. So. The blunt asshole way was good as any. “You set to go under?”

Lance hesitated for a second, dimming. Then he lit up. It was more than just the light of his projection; his entire expression lifted, and the grin he shot Keith’s way left him stunned.

“Go for it, partner.”

Keith’s fists didn’t want to unclench. His hands didn’t want to reach up and input the too-simple command. His eyes didn’t want to do a final check. He didn’t want to say goodbye.

“See you soon, Lance.”

“Yeah,” Lance said, reaching out a translucent hand that didn’t quite rest on Keith’s shoulder. “Later, gator.”

Keith hit ‘Confirm.’

Almost all of the lights died at once, taking Lance’s projection with them. The only lightsource left was the faint glow of the terminal Keith was still plugged into.

Keith clenched his fists. He wouldn’t double-check the data. It wouldn’t do any good. If he’d made a mistake, then he couldn’t fix it anymore— the transfer was complete. There wasn’t any trace of Lance in the facility’s system. Not anymore. He just had to hope he’d done everything he need to, and deal with it later if he hadn’t.

Just then, he only had one option: pushing forward and finishing the mission.

Keith took in a shaky breath, then disconnected his suit. He couldn’t risk being plugged in for the next part.

It took barely a second to key in the command to wipe the system. It took longer for the system to follow through. How long… was shaky. It was hard to tell time without another person there. Hard to tell time in the dark. Hard to care to.

A century or a dobash later, the terminal boasted a complete absence of information before it erased itself from existence, plunging the room into complete darkness. Keith stood there for a moment, unmoving, until his suit reacted for him.

The helmet chirped, recognizing the sudden darkness, and activated his viewscreen’s darkvision.

Keith startled. Right. He wasn’t done yet.

Pulling the blueprints for the facility back up on his helmet’s UI, Keith walked towards the open door. Without any more diversions, the walk back out would be a lot quicker than the trip in. Even if he did still have the shit tunnel to deal with. A least it was a straight shot.

 

* * *

 

For such a fast trip, the journey out of the facility felt like it took forever. The building seemed completely different when it was dark and quiet. Even the quiet buzz of machinery and the hum of ventilation had been silenced. The place felt dead.

Keith was almost grateful for the squelching, shitty embrace of the sewer. Almost.

What he _wasn’t_ grateful for, however, was the notable lack of a dust storm raging outside. The dust storm that was supposed to last for another two vargas. The dust storm that had been the only thing standing between him and the Galran sentries spotting his movements in and out of the building.

Fuck.

The brief spark of hope that they hadn’t seen him emerge sputtered and died the second they started shooting. Keith ducked and rolled to the side, taking cover behind the extended wall of the facility’s waste access.

Options. What did he have? Close combat was off the table when his opponents were long-range specialists— so long as they stayed out of striking distance—  and he couldn’t retreat to the sewer. It’d be like shooting fish in a barrel, especially now that Lance wasn’t defending— Wait. Lance. Defending.

Keith fumbled for the plasma rifle strapped to his back, cursing. He sucked ass at long-range, but he didn’t have a choice. At least his suit’s targeting suite could help compensate. A bit. It had a tendency to lag, and its simplistic AI wasn’t great, but it was something.

Lance was never going to let Keith hear the end of this. If he was ever allowed to find out.

Keith activated the plasma rifle, feeling it warm in his hands. It would take a second to work itself up to standby; in the meantime, Keith would have time to set up his targeting suite.

Keying in the activation code, he steeled himself for the grating chirp of the suite’s calibration script.

Instead, there was a lazy yawn, and—

“Oh c’mon,” a familiar voice whined. No way. No fucking way. “I was _sleeping!_ Did you miss me that much already, dude?”

 _“Lance?”_ He was here. He was alright. Keith hadn’t fucked up. _Lance was alright._

“The one and only!” Lance exclaimed. Then, he clucked in disapproval. “Or that’s what I would say, if you didn’t have another AI in here. I’m letting them take a break right now, but jeez, if I’d known that you’d try to cheat on me the second I turned my back, I would have—”

Whatever Lance would have done was lost as a lazer bit past Keith’s face, and he cut off with a squawk.

“Less talking, more targeting!”  
  
“Right, yeah, okay!” The targeting suite sprung to renewed life. A blink, and targets were set on the nearest sentries. Another blink, and magnification had increased.

Keith fired off two shots, taking out a sentry that had been closing in quicker than the others. He looked down at the gun, sparing a second to blink in shock. This was nothing like he was used to. The targeting suite had never been this fast— this _accurate_ before.

“Not to fish for compliments or anything, but who was right about the gun? _And_  about synching up the gun?”

Ugh. Keith should have gone into fortune-telling. Then again, predicting that Lance would be smug about something was a pretty safe bet. He fired off another shot, clipping another sentry.  
  
“It was me. I was right.” Lance laughed, and the sound was explosive. “By the way, when someone says ‘Later, gator,’ you’re supposed to answer, ‘after a while, crocodile.’ It’s kind of a thing.”

“I already said goodbye!” Keith hissed out a breath as he barely dodged an incoming shot. He ducked behind an outcropping of rock.

“It’s supposed to make the moment last, Killer!”

“It wasn’t a good moment!” Pretending there wasn’t a huge risk of Lance dying had sucked ass. No one should have wanted to extend that. Especially not Lance.

“You have, like, no sense of drama.”

A laser grazed the outcropping.

“Actually, I take that back,” Lance said, voice pitching up in panic. “Too much of the wrong kind of drama.”

“I need to…” Lance trailed off. “Here.” The display of the targeting suite shifted, changing so that each shot the sentries fired registered as a potential target. “Okay, now we can intercept the shots,” he said. Then, after a moment, “Hopefully?”

 _“Hopefully?”_ Keith asked, voice cracking. He fired off a shot at one of the further sentries, disarming them.

“I have limits, Keith!” Lance said. “And it’s not like I had much time to prepare!” He made a low, displeased noise. “I swear, one minute you’re going, ‘oh, Lance, I can’t bear to see you sacrifice yourself’, and then you pull this stunt.”

“I don’t sound like that!” Keith objected. “And I didn’t _plan_ for this,” he added. He fired at one of the incoming shots, and— hit, holy shit! He actually hit it!

“I know,” Lance said, voice fond. “Doesn’t seem like you don’t plan much of anything, Killer.”

There was a brief pressure on Keith’s wrist, as if someone was squeezing it. It only lasted a moment, though, and there were too many incoming lasers to pay attention to anything else.

It took an eternity to thin out the first wave, which wasn’t comforting, considering there were more incoming.

“Is your backup coming any time soon?” Lance asked, and shit, shit, Keith was so fucking bad at this team thing. First priority— no, shit, that was staying alive— second priority after this had to be working on his team skills because _he’d forgotten to call for backup._  

“Shit,” he said. “Gimme a sec. I’ll call ‘em once we have an opening.”

 _“Keith?”_  Lance’s voice pitched into a near shriek. “You haven’t even called— How are you alive?”

“I’ve been busy! Fighting for my life!” Keith punctuated his point with shots at the nearest sentry. He missed.

“Ugh! Fair, I guess,” Lance acknowledged. “What signal am I broadcasting to?”

“What sig— Do you even have access to that?” Keith asked. He had a bad feeling about this.

 _“Keith.”_ Lance’s voice was dripping with exasperation. “C’mon, man. Have you learnt nothing? I have access to _every_ system.” As if to punctuate his point, the suit auto-locked onto two sentries, and the rifle fired off headshots, downing them both.

“That was inside the compound,” Keith said. “You said you’d need AI permissions to— Oh.”

“Yep,” Lance confirmed, popping the sound. “When you enabled the targeting suite’s AI, it handed over AI permissions. I’m kind of limited here, especially since I’m not that familiar with this set-up, but I am all up in this OS.”

“Oh,” Keith said. “No.”

“Oh _yes,”_ Lance enthused. “So, who am I calling up here?”

Keith sighed. “Frequency 152.6,” he said.

The line connected almost immediately. Which was either a very good or a very bad thing.

“Keith?” Pidge sounded relieved to hear from him. So. Good thing, probably. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Keith said. That was a lie. He was not alright. He was being shot at. “Why?” Maybe she could tell he was being shot at.

“The readings I’m getting from your suit are freaking me out, is why,” Pidge said, and never mind. Not a good thing. Bad thing. Probably a bad thing. “They’re— Shit, this is _weird.”_

“Bad weird?” Keith had killed Lance. The suit was about to die, somehow, and Lance was going to go with it.

“No!” Pidge exclaimed. “It’s like it’s optimizing its performance automatically! I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Yeah, sorry, that’s me,” Lance chimed in, sounding distracted. Probably because he was trying to shoot down lasers. Shit. Keith needed to help with that. He’d gotten distracted. “Or, not sorry,” Lance added. “I’m keeping him alive, so…”

“Who the hell—” Pidge cut herself off. “Wait. Is that— Lance, is that you?”

There was a beat of silence.

 _“Katie?_ What are you doing on Keith’s comms?” Lance asked. He sounded like he’d fall over from shock, if he had a body.

“That’s what I should be asking you!” Pidge replied, and Keith was officially thrown for a fucking loop. Nothing made sense. Nothing might ever make sense ever again. The only thing that had ever or would ever make sense was the targeting suite telling him what he needed to hit.

“How do you two know each other?” Keith asked.

“We’re in the same party!” Lance exclaimed a second before Pidge said, “We play Monsters & Mana together.”

 _“Pidge is your Monsters & Mana friend?” _ Keith asked, stunned. Then, the suite flashed at him, just in time for him to duck, and right, he had more important things like _lasers aimed at his head_ to deal with _._

“We play with Hunk, too,” Pidge added.

Keith fired off a few shots of coverfire, then went for the kill. _“Hunk too?”_ This couldn’t have been happening. There was no way. How could Lance have possibly made friends with Keith’s team before he even met them? Coincidences like that didn’t just happen!

“How the fuck did you pick up Lance in an abandoned Galra facility?” Pidge asked. Her tone was hard to place, and— oh. Oh, Pidge was confused. _Pidge_ was confused. That was a new one. “He lives in _Cuba!_ You’re on another planet!”

Nervous laughter bubbled out of Lance. “Uh… About that…”

“It’s fine,” Keith said, cutting him off. “He lives in my armor now.”

 _“He does what?”_ Pidge asked, as Lance emitted a low, pained groan in the background.

“Jesus Christ, Keith,” Lance said, then returned to his one man chorus of pained noises.

“What is _happening_ right now!” Pidge sounded like she was about half an inch from losing her shit.

“No time to explain,” Keith said. As if to punctuate his point, a laser caught him on the shoulder, and he grunted with pain.

“Shit, are you—” Lance hissed in an unnecessary breath, which was still confusing. Keith had questions about Lance’s affectation choices. “Okay. Vitals are still looking okay.”

“Are you being shot at right now?” Pidge asked, voice sharp. “Keith! You lead with that!” There was a brief pause. “We’ll be ready to extract you in a few minutes. Can you hold on ‘till then?”

Keith looked at the growing number of sentries. “Yeah,” he said. “Easy.”

“The faster you can get here, the better,” Lance cut in. “He’s super lying. Like, don’t worry, we have this covered, but also, please come save us immediately.”

“Roger, wilco,” Pidge said. “Hold on, guys. See you in a bit.”

“See ya, Katie,” Lance said.

“Over and out.” The comms line terminated, leaving Keith and Lance alone with a never ending swarm of sentries. They worked in silence for a moment.

“You know,” Lance said, “I saw a movie like this once.”

“Huh,” Keith replied, firing off a shot. “Did the— Did whoever we’re supposed to be win?”

“Don’t know.” Lance sounded sheepish. “I didn’t exactly, uh... finish it?”

Well. Whatever. They’d write their own story. “Spoilers,” Keith said. “We’re winning this one.” They’d hold on until Pidge arrived, retreat to the ship, and everything would be fine. Keith wouldn’t accept anything less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go out to my editor, Stella, who went over the conflict with me about five times because I kept making everyone too reasonable


End file.
